“Imagine you are waving that stick around where you are no longer the apex predator. You are rowing down a coastal river with massive trees nourished by salmon carcasses and grizzly shit. You smell something foul in the downstream wind and glance back to see a 900 pound griz watching as you float by. It’s humbling. It’s visceral…but not terrifying. The shit that is more terrifying is thinking about how we got so far from this place. It’s thinking about returning to a job in a couple days where I’ll put some symbolic silk convention around my neck to do ‘work.’ I mean, I’ve spent enough time in the woods to know a cold beer and warm shower at the end of a day are great, and my boat is made of fiberglass and all, but fuck! What happened to us?”
It’s dark now and all I can see is Aaron’s silhouette and a glint of gold as he tilts back a Guinness in the fire’s glow. “We went down to the crossroads, Jim, and made a deal with the devil --mastery of the world in exchange for our souls.
“I know, but sometimes I feel like Robert Johnson after striking that deal. Standing alone after midnight, guitar in one hand, cigarette in the other; breathing in that swampy southern air wondering if we made the right decision.”
Too many of us are I fear, as Aldo Leopold put it, “trading awareness for things of lesser worth.”